For many of us who were familiar with the voice business, it seemed inconceivable that fixed network voice calling would be a product like any other, with a life cycle of growth, maturation and then decline. But that has happened.
Surveys of U.S. consumer use of landline telephone networks (2022 to 2024) suggest the percentage of U.S. households or adults with any type of landline phone service ranges between 24 percent and 30 percent, down from 90-percent or higher levels in the early 2000s.
One reason is that about 70 percent or more of U.S. consumers rely on mobile phones for voice communications.
U.S. carrier of last resort laws impose specific obligations on incumbent phone companies to ensure basic telephone service is available to all residents. The core principle is the obligation to provide service to any customer, irrespective of how difficult or costly it might be to reach them.
Such laws have cost implications for telcos trying to modernize their networks, as a carrier of last resort cannot simply abandon service or cease operations in its designated territory without obtaining permission from state public utility commissions.
As a practical matter, that includes the copper access networks few customers use anymore. The obligation is understood to mean that "basic service" (voice connections over copper networks) must be maintained.
The key issue is that service providers would vastly prefer to retire the lightly-used copper networks and replace them with modern fiber optic networks, for example.
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